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Joe Soucheray: Soak the rich! Now! Then we'll move on to the real solution.

By Joe Soucheray

Posted:
11/27/2012 12:01:00 AM CST

Updated:
11/27/2012 09:14:37 PM CST

Apparently, at least as I represent my household, I owe $136,690 as my share of the national debt, which the day after Thanksgiving topped $16.3 trillion. I did not incur this debt, and it makes me uncomfortable.

Every household in America -- 117,538,000 of them, according to the most recent census estimates -- owes that much. If I should pay my share, am I off the hook, or is the speed of borrowing such that I am off the hook for a nanosecond and I begin to owe a new total?

I don't know about you, but the way it has always worked in my limited circle of American life is that if I borrow a lot of money, then I am broke. I don't want to borrow a lot of money. I don't want to be broke.

It goes against everything I thought we had been taught to be so indebted.

And it goes against rational thinking to believe that tax increases on what President Barack Obama calls wealthy people might solve the problem. But Obama won, and I think we should call his bluff. He wants more taxes on the wealthy. I guess by "wealthy" he means people who earn more than $250,000 a year.

Let's do it. Soak those people. Soak those people in order to discover that it won't mean a thing in terms of reducing the nation's debt. Go to Gates and Buffett and all the Hollywood types who think Obama is the answer and raise their taxes.

Then we might quickly discover that the increased tax revenue won't mean a thing in terms of reducing the debt. Do your own math on trying to erase a $16.3 trillion hole. We'll still be in trouble.

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We'll still be borrowing, but we will have to take a timeout and say: "OK, we raised taxes on the so-called rich people and it didn't help. So now what do we do?"

Well, the government could confiscate all the money generated by Gates and Buffett and those other 1 percenters, and when the American people realize that it won't make a difference, we might realize that we have to stop spending.

We have a president who wants to spend, unsustainably, and then tells the American people, "Come on, those rich people can pay a little more.''

Then do it. Let's get it over with. Tax the stuffing out of everybody who makes more than $250,000 a year. I am tired of hearing about it.

In fact, the Republicans in the House should say to the American people:

"We no longer intend to cling to the obvious. We are going to do it the president's way. We are going to acquiesce to his wish to tax the wealthy. We are going to let the Bush tax cuts expire and, more than that, we are going to let the president and his party establish new tax rates on people who make more than $250,000 a year. Whatever they want. We want you to see the folly in this, to truly experience it, that it won't make any difference in solving our terrible debt crisis, but that is what he wants and we will not stand in his way."

Maybe, just maybe, if the American people can see that the so-called wealthy people have been suitably punished and that it won't make a difference on the country being broke, they will be agreeable to trying something else, which is less spending.

It is what you have to do in your own household, which is now $136,690 in hock. If you do not want to be broke, you do not make purchases you cannot afford. You make a deliberate decision not to borrow money. It feels good not to be broke. Why, it even captures a distant, fleeting American tradition of tidiness not to be broke.

We have a president telling us that if only we could tax rich people more, then we won't be broke. Let's hurry up and do this. Let's hurry up so that we might see the delusional, fatal flaw in his thinking and then come to another decision, one that adults would reach.